August | 2015 |

I’ve been working on a music project for the last few months, and in order to be generally efficient and maintain the consistency of the sound of the guitars across different recording sessions, I created a structured ‘pipeline’ for recording. Also this setup exists in my living room, which is in an apartment, so a classic analog setup with amplifiers and mics was out of the question, it would have been much too loud for my neighbors and much too cumbersome for myself. I opted for a solution involving a lot of digital mumbo jumbo. The following diagram shows the setup.

The analog guitar signal first goes through the chain of Effects Processors via an instrument cable.

The processed analog sound goes into the Audio Interface, which is the heart of the system. The AI lets me monitor the guitar signal by sending a direct analog output to speakers or headphones. Purists might cringe at this ‘amp-less’ setup at this stage, but I feel I get a pretty good sound by the final stage.

The AI is also connected to the workhorse – the PC, via a usb connection. The AI samples the analog signal and converts it into a digital signal before sending it to the PC. I use a Digital Audio Workstation(DAW) to read those signals and save them out in a project. The sound of the guitar is further moulded by the DAW with EQ, effects and plugins to get the final sound. The DAW also sends an out signal back to the AI for playback of recorded tracks, which allows me to record over sections that I have already recorded. There is also a USB connection into one of the modules in the effects chain, which allows me to control the module through my PC and help me save tone presets.

The project contains several different tones that need to sound the same every time I record. Every detail of the few tones used in the project is saved out in a document, which contains information about levels of knobs, effects presets, guitar string type, choice of picks etc.

So far the setup has been pretty reliable and has worked out well for everything I’ve recorded.

Here’s a brief description of a simple setup I created for deployment and update of tools over SVN at my workplace. Prior to this, tools were inefficiently being shared as separate files on a case by case basis. I knew the setup would need to be quick and straightforward from the designers/artists’ perspective. I did not want the end user to spend a lot of time or effort with the tools installation/updates. Also, the most recent version of the tools needed to be accessible by all users across the network.

Tools Folder – The main task was creating an organized and scalable tools folder that contains all the maxscript files. The folder also contains an icon folder, which holds all the custom icons that were created for the tools. A generalHelperFuntions.ms was created in the folder, to contain scripts for the more commonly used functions shared across several tools. Finally, there was the macros.ms file, which contains macroscripts for every script added into the tools folder.

3ds Max setup – 3ds max can be asked to run scripts on startup from a particular folder. The Tools Folder was linked to 3ds max so that whenever 3ds max starts, all the functions contained in the scripts would be initialized (In hindsight, this could be further optimized by separating the base scripts to a different location, and only the macros would be run on startup. The macros themselves would contain the location of the base scripts which could be initialized lazily)

SVN – Once the tools folder was setup and tested with 3ds max, it was checked into SVN. Tools are added/updated and checked into SVN as and when needed. For adding a new script, macros.ms also needs an entry for it.

Client Side Setup – To install the tools for an end user, the Tools Folder would need to be checked out from the repo into the users local drive and 3ds Max would be directed to read scripts from that folder on startup. This is only a one time setup (unless 3ds Max forgets the path to the Tools Folder, in which case it will have to be done again) and is a fairly simple one too.

Client Side Update – Every time a tool is updated/added, the user can SVN update the Tools Folder and restart 3ds Max, and they would have the latest version of the tools up and running.

Monthly Archives: August 2015

Living Room Studio Setup

Deploying MaxScript Tools